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Pesticides are killing the world's soils

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#91

Post by mikehotel »

hosh wrote: post #23
timeinput wrote: post #12

Does anyone have sources for suggestions about what we should do? I read these articles, and worry, and wonder what can I do. It's not clear to me that buying organic mono-cropped bananas at the mega mart is in anyway better or worse than buying non-organic mono-cropped bananas. I'd really like to just build up some more understanding on what I can do in my daily life to make things not worse.

There's a ton individuals can do. The societal solutions to this has been around from decades, if not centuries. Look up the documentary called Kiss the Earth for a good intro that covers this and more. As far as individuals goes, you can look for food sourced locally using regenerative agriculture -- agroforestry, permaculture, etc. The farm is usually operated as a diverse ecosystem that is designed to grow the soi…

I found this map/lookup tool linked from their website to be useful for finding local farms to support: https://regenerationinternational.org/regenerative-farm-map

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#92

Post by andrei_says_ »

rmason wrote: post #28

I've watched the entire cycle in the past thirty years as a former agronomist. We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. This allowed us to stop spraying thousands of tons of less insecticides. But the very people complaining about spraying chemicals rejected these new enhanced plants saying they weren't 'natural'. We have been breeding plants to do t…

Are intentionally conflating breeding with genetic engineering? That’s one of Monsanto’s tactics to confuse the public and dismiss concerns with genetically engineered plants.

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#93

Post by caf »

rmason wrote: post #28

I've watched the entire cycle in the past thirty years as a former agronomist. We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. This allowed us to stop spraying thousands of tons of less insecticides. But the very people complaining about spraying chemicals rejected these new enhanced plants saying they weren't 'natural'. We have been breeding plants to do t…

We also, at the same time, genetically modified plants to be resistant to Glyphosate so that we could spray thousands of tons more of this herbicide. Semantic arguments about what is and isn't 'natural' aside, it's clear the technology has been a double-edged sword.

I'm not set against GMOs myself, but I feel that proponents of the technology do themselves a disservice with the argument that it's no different to selective breeding with better tools: there is actually a difference of kind, not just degree here, because the technology allows you to introduce complete alien genes to an organism rather than incremental modifications or regulation changes of genes already existing in that species. Trying to gloss over that feels dishonest.

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#95

Post by Ma8ee »

gravelc wrote: post #78
rmason wrote: post #28

I've watched the entire cycle in the past thirty years as a former agronomist. We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. This allowed us to stop spraying thousands of tons of less insecticides. But the very people complaining about spraying chemicals rejected these new enhanced plants saying they weren't 'natural'. We have been breeding plants to do t…

The other downside with the GM approach that people rarely mention is that there are no transformation protocols for many crops.

What is a transformation protocol in this context?

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#96

Post by andrei_says_ »

Ma8ee wrote: post #88
londons_explore wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to bet it's less bad than the status quo. Sure, bad things will happen with a few GM crops, but worse things will probably happen from existing non-GM farming practices. I think most experts would also agree with that assesment.

That is a false dichotomy. It is perfectly possible to get good yields with farming practices that use neither pesticides nor GM.

Exactly. This reminds me the interview where a Monsanto rep was asking an activist whether she’d prefer to provide people with genetically engineered rice or have them suffer from vitamin deficiency.

What a made up false dichotomy.

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#98

Post by sofixa »

BelenusMordred wrote: post #70
rosetremiere wrote: post #44

In Switzerland, we're soon going to vote on two initiatives ¹² aiming at reducing pesticide use. The first is essentially about forbidding the use of all artificial pesticides by 2031 (also importation of food that was produced abroad using pesticides). The second is about removing subsidies to farmers that use any kind of pesticide, or regularly use antibiotics on their livestock, etc. I feel like they are quite dra…

> I feel like they are quite drastic initiatives To me the greatest thing about Switzerland's direct democracy is that society gets the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them with a very quick turnaround. If it really is a bad thing or has unintended consequences, the people will revert it back soon enough. I doubt that is the case, but time will tell. The problem with modern 2-party systems in the West is…

> The problem with modern 2-party systems in the West

You mean the US, maybe Canada? The closest equivalents outside of North America, the UK and Australia, with the same broken voting system that favours a limited party landscape, have more than 2 parties in the mainstream and coalitions are often needed ( like Tories with DUP recently).

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#99

Post by mro_name »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #35
fy20 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything I'd say the problem is we don't understand enough about how soil and its corresponding ecosystem works, the article even says that: > Currently, regulators completely ignore pesticides’ harm to earthworms, springtails, beetles and thousands of other subterranean species. Pesticides and herbicides are designed to kill certain things, with the assumption that "this is bad because it's not what I want to gro…

Someone I have been studying that is a step up in scale from permaculture is Jean-Martin Fortier [1] (inspired by Eliot Coleman [2]) who does a fully organic/biodynamic system. It is relatively small scale but high output for-profit farming. I am developing an open source robot that I hope will be able to farm this way, though it’s early days. [3] JM Fortier of course is only one of many skilled farmers throughout th…

Permaculture is phantastic – however, how does it align with selling produce, i.e. removing material from the farm?

Re: Pesticides are killing the world's soils

#100

Post by selcuka »

smhost wrote: post #50
selcuka wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We were able to genetically modify plants so they generated natural pesticides as a defense against insects. Isn't this the good old "naturalistic fallacy" though? Would you eat a poisonous mushroom because the poison is "natural"? You can at least wash some pesticides off. I'm not a biologist but I'm sure there is a difference between crossing different varieties of peas versus introducing a non-pea (or maybe non-…

"we shouldn't mess with nature" is also a naturalistic fallacy, fyi

If you are pointing at me, I have never said that.
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